


The Long and Ineffective Courtship of Stiles Stilinski (that somehow works out in the end)

by TheVoiceofWrath (meet_your_fate)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Derek and Stiles are Mates, M/M, POV Derek Hale, Socially Awkward Derek, meddling friends and siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 23:43:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1568243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meet_your_fate/pseuds/TheVoiceofWrath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Derek is thirteen when he notices the smell. It’s not like anything he’s ever smelled before. But it’s during the sorting, so he can’t really pin down who the smell is coming from. There are so many people. He’s sure he looks like an idiot, craning his neck around to look at everyone. His older sister, Laura, kicks him underneath the Gryffindor table and tells him to stop making a spectacle of himself.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Long and Ineffective Courtship of Stiles Stilinski (that somehow works out in the end)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prompt fill for [hannibal-spectre](http://hannibal-spectre.tumblr.com/): harry potter au! with socially awkward werewolf derek who finds his mate in a scrawny ~~gryffindor~~ Slytherin prankster.
> 
> I love HP AUs, but Stiles will only ever be a Slytherin in my mind, lol.

Derek is thirteen when he notices the smell. It’s not like anything he’s ever smelled before. But it’s during the sorting, so he can’t really pin down _who_ the smell is coming from. There are so many people. He’s sure he looks like an idiot, craning his neck around to look at everyone. His older sister, Laura, kicks him underneath the Gryffindor table and tells him to stop making a spectacle of himself.

He barely eats during the whole feast. After, he writes a hurried letter to his mother, asking her advice about what happened. He’s never been so taken by a smell like that.

She writes back the next morning and tells him that he must’ve smelled his _mate_ and isn’t that nice? She’s so happy for him and Derek’s father is, too. They can’t wait to hear all about the person.

Derek is less than happy. He doesn’t even know who the person _is_ …

So he starts a list of all the facts he has to narrow it down. All he has so far is that his mate is probably a first year; it has to be someone who’s new at the school, someone who wasn’t here last year.

That’s all that remains on his list for a while. It hard to pinpoint the scent because it seems like it’s coming from _everywhere_. It’s all over classrooms and the halls and he smells it at different tables in the great hall. It’s all over people who aren’t his mate, too, like his mate just goes around _touching_ people. It’s ridiculous. How is he ever supposed to figure out who it is? He spends a _month_ certain that it’s Scott McCall, a first year Gryffindor. The only reason he realizes it’s not is because he catches Scott in the boy’s bathroom after a shower and he doesn’t smell right, doesn’t smell like Derek’s mate. That’s actually kind of disappointing; Scott would’ve been a good mate. He’s a nice kid, always smiling and Derek has seen him helping other kids in their house with various things in the common room.

And Derek makes kind of an ass out of himself trying to befriend Scott, too. _Befriend_ , because eleven or twelve is entirely too young to be dealing with serious stuff like mates and significant others and courtship. He’s not going to tell his mate about everything for years, of course, not until he’s sure his mate will understand and can make an informed decision in regards to the whole _forever_ thing.

It’s not until after winter break that he finally figures out his mate is a Slytherin; his mate’s scent is all over the dungeons. Derek notices it when he’s wandering around one weekend. After _that_ , well, he can narrow the list down a little bit more. There are only so many first year Slytherins, after all. He can just cross them off by process of elimination.

That… turns out to be harder than he was expecting. He spends a week convinced it’s Jackson Whittemore and just wishing he could die because, seriously? That would be the _worst_. The Whittemores are not the kind of family the Hales usually associate with. Old money and snobbish attitudes; Jackson seems to fit the mold perfectly. Derek’s little sister, Cora, complains about him all the time. They have a few classes together. If she’s not complaining about what a jerk Jackson Whittemore is, she’s complaining about the Stilinski kid being such a troublemaker.

Derek goes home that year with it narrowed down to three possible candidates. He’s miserable the whole summer long.

♦

September first, on the platform waiting for the train, Derek gets a face full of some kind of powder. He sputters and tries to brush it off, but Laura is cackling beside him.

"Your face, oh my god!"

"What about it?" Derek snarls, glaring at her.

"It’s _purple_!”

Derek is _mortified_.

Stiles Stilinski rushes towards him, all scrawny, coltish limbs and looking like he’s trying very hard not to laugh. “I’m so sorry, please don’t kill me! That was totally meant for Jackson! He’s such a jerk, right?”

Derek wants to respond. He wants to say something witty and charming because he can tell now; Stilinski is his mate. How he could’ve ever thought it was anyone else is beyond him because none of the other possible people _ever_ smelled so good as Stiles. He just stands there, gaping like a fish with a purple face.

Stiles blinks at him and then looks at Laura, who’s still cackling. She must know that Stiles is Derek’s mate. He would be tearing into the kid right now if it were anyone else. But it just amuses Laura more. She wipes a tear from her eye.

Stiles must think they’re both insane. “Um,” he says. “It should wear off in like an hour…? Okay. Good talk. My friends are waiting for me. Bye.”

And then he’s gone and Derek wants the floor to open up and swallow him. His mate, the second year, has to think the absolute _worst_ of him. He spends the entire ride to school moping. And not even about his purple face.

♦

That’s how it goes for years. Stiles is amazing, beautiful, a wonderful seeker, one of those students who never really needs to study but gets A’s anyway, and a wicked prankster. And Derek? He becomes a prefect and maybe abuses his power to not give Stiles detention when he finds him out of bed at night. Which is often; something about insomnia and wandering around being helpful when his mind is busy. Derek gets that.

But Derek doesn’t make any headway in befriending Stiles. He’s so awkward. About the most he can do is sit near Stiles in the library and stare at him when he isn’t looking. It’s physically painful how bad Derek is at this. Even after Laura graduates, she sends him letters telling him to man up and just ask Stiles out already. He _can’t_ , though. It’s not possible. Stiles would surely say no, since Derek has been acting like such a weirdo this whole time. Stiles has no reason to say yes.

Derek tries to make conversation a few times. All of them are failures. Once, they’re in the locker rooms off the quidditch pitch. Derek is a beater on the Gryffindor team. Which is actually kind of hazardous; he keeps zoning out, looking at Stiles. He gets hit with a bludger in the head once. It takes a pretty hard hit to give a werewolf a concussion that sticks. When Laura finds out, she sends him a howler that’s just her laughing. It’s so embarrassing.

Anyway, they’re in the locker rooms. He knows Stiles is waiting for his friend Scott, a chaser on the Gryffindor team, but Scott’s taking too long. He’s trying to flirt with Allison, who’s also a chaser. Scott is adorably hopeless in a way that will probably work for him, whereas Derek is _desperately_ hopeless in a way that’s probably just creepy.

Stiles is waiting there in the hall outside the locker rooms, hair still dripping wet like he’s forgotten he’s a wizard and can dry it with a spell. It’s really distracting. Derek comes up to him and hesitates for a moment. Those big, magical brown eyes lock on him, a perfect brow arching curiously.

A minute passes.

"You, uh… You want something, big guy?" Stiles asks.

Derek can feel his face burning, all the way up to the tips of his ears. _Big guy_? Oh god. He clears his throat and can feel his mouth forming a scowl. He can’t help it; it’s just a natural response to his own self loathing, which is increasing by the moment. Why is he so terrible at this? Why can’t he be charming and witty? “Good game. You—you played a good game.”

Stiles grins brightly. “Thanks man. You, too. You almost knocked Jackson right off his broom. It was hilarious, the way he flailed when he overbalanced.”

Derek nods and tries to think of something else to say. God, he needs _lines_. Like a script he can read from or something.

Scott comes out of the Gryffindor locker room and looks at the pair of them curiously. “You ready to go, Stiles?”

"Yeah, totally," Stiles says. He grins at Derek and waves as he follows after Scott. "See you around, big guy."

It’s by far their best interaction. Derek watches Stiles go and laments the fact that it was still absolutely atrocious.

♦

For the Yule Ball during Derek’s sixth year, Derek spends _months_ trying to work up the nerve to ask Stiles to go with him. He’s all set to do it, too. He _going to_. He’s striding towards where Stiles and Scott are goofing around in the snow outside, determined to finally find his cajones and ask Stiles to be his date.

But then he hears Stiles complaining to Scott about how much he embarrassed himself asking Lydia to the dance. She said no, Derek hears that much, but he still feels it like a punch to the gut—Stiles likes _Lydia Martin_. If brilliant, beautiful Ravenclaws are Stiles’s type, then he can’t like Derek. And maybe _girls_ are Stiles’s type, too. Derek spends the rest of the afternoon and evening moping in his fourposter bed, curtains drawn to block out the cruel, cruel world.

He ends up going to the Yule Ball alone and lurking awkwardly in a corner, watching Stiles dance with his friends. And with _Cora_ , too, the traitor. She _knows_ Stiles is his mate…

Stiles looks ridiculously attractive in his burgundy dress robes, too. Life just isn’t fair.

♦

It’s Derek’s seventh year and this is it. If he doesn’t get Stiles to date him now, he never will. He’ll have to live the rest of his life knowing he missed his window of opportunity. He’s determined to do everything within his power to get Stiles to notice him, to think of him as a friend if nothing else. If they’re friends, it’s possible they’ll see each other after Derek graduates. That’s all he needs; as much opportunity as he can scrounge up.

The first thing he does is give himself detention. Headmaster Deaton gives him an amused, knowing look the next time he sees Derek, but that doesn’t even matter. He knows Stiles has detention for a month because of a prank he played on Professor Harris and scrubbing cauldrons clean the muggle way isn’t all that hard. He’d do worse than that to spend time _alone_ with Stiles.

Stiles seems happy to see him when he enters the room and rolls his sleeves up. “No way. _You_ have detention?”

Derek shrugs and gets to work. “So?”

"I just didn’t expect it. You’re a prefect and stuff. But I guess people say you have kind of a temper," Stiles says.

He doesn’t want Stiles to think he has a temper. Does he? Yes, he does. But he’s afraid maybe Stiles sees that as a turnoff or something…

Stiles seems content to talk, even if the conversation is kind of one-sided. He talks about anything and everything and Derek is just so happy to have his attention. He tries to nod and grunt at the right times.

♦

Derek’s small group of friends decides, for some reason, to join up with Scott’s group of friends in Hogsmeade one weekend. He thinks it’s because Isaac is trying to date Scott. Which is kind of cute, actually. But Derek spends the whole time being awkward and trying not to make an ass of himself in front of Stiles. He’s so distracted that he finds himself suddenly _alone_ with Stiles in Flourish and Blotts. Where did everyone else go? Oh god, Derek isn’t prepared for this.

Stiles blushes a little bit and smiles at him. “Guess they left us, huh?”

"Looks like," Derek grumbles.

"Well, to heck with them. We can have fun with just the two of us, right?" Stiles asks.

Derek nods. Yes, yes they can. All kinds of fun. Maybe in private, too…

What follows is an incredibly awkward venture through the rest of Hogsmeade, including a drink at the Three Broomsticks. Derek tries to keep the conversation going. It’s good that Stiles is apparently capable of carrying it seemingly all by himself.

As they head back up to the castle and have to part ways, Stiles seems to become a little uncertain and says, “Maybe we can do this again sometime…”

Derek would like that very, very much. He nods. “Sure…”

He finds out later that Cora and his friends were in cahoots; they’d planned to get Derek alone with Stiles the entire time. Well, Derek is reluctantly grateful for it.

♦

Stiles starts showing up everywhere. Derek doesn’t mind—of course he doesn’t—but he also doesn’t understand. Are they friends now? Did he miss them suddenly becoming friends? Whatever, he’s going with it. It’s better than he ever thought he’d actually get. Friends with his mate. Maybe someday, it’ll be more than that… _  
_

The month or so before the Yule Ball, Stiles starts acting weird, though. He keeps sending these _looks_ Derek’s way and he has no idea what Stiles wants. Did Derek do something? Is Stiles expecting an apology? He doesn’t understand.

Stiles gives him the cold shoulder the entire day before the Yule Ball. Derek can’t help but feel like he’s done something terribly wrong…

At least this year, at the dance, his friends drag him onto the dance floor instead of letting him lurk in a corner. Their two groups have combined into one. That’s kind of nice, having more friends. Scott really is cool. He’s even more cool now, since he got Bitten by a rogue werewolf over the summer. Scott’s a good werewolf.

But it also means Derek gets a front row seat to Stiles dancing with anyone that will have him. During one of the faster songs, when all of them are dancing together, Derek gets shoved close to Stiles by Erica and it’s all he can do not to howl. Stiles’s scent is stronger from the exertion of dancing for hours. Stiles kind of grabs onto Derek a little bit, though, and dances all up in Derek’s space. He feels lightheaded from it.

When the song ends, he beats a hasty retreat from the great hall, heading for the gardens outside to get some fresh air.

Stiles follows, though. “Derek. Derek, oh my god, wait up a minute.”

Derek reluctantly stops. He wants to _run_. Maybe Stiles wouldn’t follow him into the Forbidden Forest… But, no, who’s he kidding? Stiles would totally follow. He's reckless like that.

Stiles is panting when he reaches Derek’s side. “Why—Why did you leave?”

Derek shrugs. “It was just really hot in there. I’ll go back in a minute. You can head inside.”

Stiles narrows his eyes at Derek. “Really? That’s what it is?”

"What else would it be?"

"It would be you chickening out _again_ ,” Stiles says.

Derek’s eyes go wide. “What—What are you talking about?”

Stiles throws his hands in the air, letting out an exasperated groan. “I’m talking about you not _telling me_. I’ve known for months, dude. Scott’s a werewolf now, remember? He told me all about it. Haven’t you wondered why he’s with Isaac now instead of Allison? The whole mate smell thing. Were you just not gonna tell me? Were you gonna graduate and go away and never ask me to be your mate?”

Derek just blinks at Stiles for a moment.

When he tries to speak, he comes up with nothing. Stiles _knows_? Oh god. Oh _god_. “Why didn’t _you_ say anything?”

"I thought you were waiting or something! But then we had our date in Hogsmeade and you didn’t follow up. You were supposed to ask me out again! So I figured maybe you… maybe you didn’t want me after all. Maybe you didn’t want to have a mate or maybe there was someone else…"

"There’s no one else," Derek is quick to assure. God, he didn’t even _know_ they’d been on a date. He’s so bad at all of this. “Since the first time I smelled you, it’s only been you.”

"Then why didn’t you say so? I thought I was hinting pretty hard about wanting you to ask me to the Yule Ball," Stiles says.

Derek scowls. “I thought you were mad at me…”

"No way, man. I’ve had a crush on you since forever. I mean, I was mad that you didn’t ask."

"I was afraid," Derek admits, blushing a little and looking at the ground.

"Of what?"

"Of you saying no," Derek grumbles.

Stiles beams at him and grabs his hand. “I’m not gonna say no. Come on; let’s go inside where it’s warm…”

They don’t end up making it back to the dance at all. When he writes Laura to tell her that he and Stiles are finally dating, it turns out Cora already wrote her about it and told her that, in the end, _Stiles_ was the one who found his cajones and made the first move. Laura thinks that’s hilarious.

She sends a package that explodes into fireworks in the great hall. Derek would be mortified, but he catches Stiles’s wink from the Slytherin table and decides he doesn’t care how embarrassing his sister is. He doesn’t care about much now that he knows he can pull Stiles into an empty classroom and kiss the daylights out of him.

**Author's Note:**

> Come follow me on [tumblr](http://thevoiceofwrath.tumblr.com), let's be bros ♥


End file.
